How does China look at the just concluded U.S.-China trade talks? Did China get what it wanted? For more, CGTN’s Wang Guan had an exclusive interview with head of the Chinese delegation, Chinese Vice Premier Liu He.

TRANSCRIPT:

LIU HE, CHINESE VICE PREMIER
The strongest demand from both the Chinese side and the U.S. side, by the U.S. side I mean the U.S. government, U.S. House and Senate, U.S. business community, and the American people.

By the Chinese side I mean the Chinese government, its people, and its business community. Their demand is to stop the trade war – and stop imposing more tariffs on each other’s products. This time, both sides pledged to stop the trade war and develop good relations, be it in trade or in investment. I think this is a major demand from both countries.

WANG GUAN, CGTN
We were told by the Chinese side the talks were “constructive, positive and fruitful”. What exactly do you mean by that?

LIU HE
I’d like to add another word. It is very practical. Because we have reached lots of concrete consensus in terms of trade, in terms of concrete items of trade and also structural issue.

For this time, we are focusing on some concrete issues, such as agricultural products and energy products – exports to China. In China, the Chinese people really like to buy more. The Chinese market will become the largest world market. So to increase import, rebalancing the economy, and also expanding domestic demand is our national policy.

Actually we have already established some working groups, including the agriculture group, the energy group, and some other groups. Maybe some ministers from the U.S. government will lead this group to Beijing and will find our colleagues to have deeper discussion with them and try to make concrete deals.

We expand our domestic market and increase imports because we want to serve the needs of our people, our economy, and our growth. Expanding domestic market and further opening-up will help our reform and growth. Speeding reform and growth by means of opening up is a very important national strategy. It worked for China for the past 40 years, and we will continue down that path.

Exporting to China or making China buy more, one must make the Chinese consumers happy. If you are selling stuff the Chinese people are not interested in buying, no matter how hard you demand, it’s just not gonna work.

This round of talks have been pragmatic, fruitful, efficient. We reached many agreements. We agreed on mainly two areas. One is trade, the other is structural issues. We resolved some of our misunderstandings from the past. These meetings will not just help bilateral economic and trade relations, but overall ties. It’s good for people in both countries. It’s also sending a positive signal to the whole world.